Urban Hiker SF

I love the magic of train travel. The soothing movement of the cars, the rhythmic sound of the wheels on the rails, watching the ever-changing landscapes flash by in front of your eyes, what’s not to love? This is exactly why I had a trip on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train on my to-do list for so long. We finally got to experience this route for ourselves on a trip from the Bay Area to LA in February 2025. The Coast Starlight runs daily between Seattle and Los Angeles. There are six stops in Washington, six in Oregon, and a whopping eighteen in California. The full route takes 35 hours, and the Amtrak website asserts it’s “widely regarded as one of the most spectacular of all train routes.”  For Bay Area travelers, there are three Amtrak stations to choose from: Emeryville, Oakland, and San Jose. Given traffic from San Francisco to the East Bay, and given the train timing, we opted to take Caltrain from 4th Street to San Jose’s Diridon Station. We knew we were going to fly...

Santa Catalina Island (commonly just called Catalina Island) is 22 miles off the coast of Long Beach and a roughly one-hour ferry ride on the Catalina Express Ferry . Catalina is not the largest of the Channel Islands , but it’s the only developed one, with two towns, the larger Avalon and the sparsely populated Two Harbors. If you’re visiting the island for the first time, you’re most likely going to Avalon, where 93 percent of the island’s 3,500 residents live. As someone who grew up on the East Coast, upon landing, I immediately thought, “Oh, this is the Martha’s Vineyard of the West.” There are indeed similarities — the island is buzzing with tourists and once you disembark from the ferry, the harbor is blanketed with t-shirt and ice cream shops. But there are also big differences, for example, in the terrain, home styles, and the flora and fauna. And just a few blocks from the harbor, a mountain ridge rises up behind you, with the tallest peak reaching almost 2,100 feet. ...

I’ve now written three books for Mountaineers Books ( two are published and one’s coming out in February 2026 ), and in each one, we include The Mountaineers Ten Essentials . The Ten Essentials are categories of items you should have on hand on your outdoor adventures in case of an emergency. I do a lot of hiking in urban areas with mild weather, so in reality, I regularly only have seven of these on me at any given time. As someone who’s done thousands of miles of hiking in the Bay over the past number of years, here are my gear picks for each these essential categories. As a heads up, some of these items have affiliate associated with them, so I do make a commission on them, but I actually use these items and endorse them. My Take on the Ten Essentials   1.  Navigation .   Always make sure you have a map with you or that you can pick one up at the trailhead.  Picking up a map on the fly isn't my style, so I always look at maps ahead of time s...